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Orions were known for their distinctive green skin, although at least some had a more pale gray-ish complexion. Orion males were typically bald and, on average, taller and more muscular than the average Human male. Orion females typically had black or red hair.

In Orion society, the males were slaves to the females. As a means of deceiving other species, the Orions maintained the facade that the females were the slaves. This went as far as Orion females on the Orion slave market. (ENT: "Borderland", "Bound"; TOS: "The Cage")

Once sold to a male, the Orion slave girls used their unique physiology to their advantage; their highly potent pheromones accelerated the metabolisms of males of many species, raising adrenaline production to dangerous levels which caused aggression and, ultimately, a form of delusion. Its most significant effect was to make them susceptible to suggestion. Not long after, the "owner" males began taking orders from their "slave" females. The pheromones' effects were cumulative; the longer exposed, the more pronounced the results.

Human females reacted negatively to those same pheromones, experiencing headaches, and Denobulan males found their sleep cycles interrupted by them. Vulcans were immune to effects of the pheromones.

In 2155, Tellarites suspected Orions of raiding their vessels, and demanded that the Coalition of Planets establish a trade embargo against them. The Coridanites, however, called this accusation 'Tellarite slander'. (ENT: "Demons")

Little was known about the organization of the Orion government, or if indeed a government existed.

Prior to 2270, the Orions had carefully maintained an air of neutrality, especially while operating in and around Federation space. This, however, has proven to be more of a guise than a reality, and was often used as an effort to cover their usually shady operations. Nevertheless, Orion's official position of neutrality comes before ship and crew, as all unsuccessful Orion missions end in suicide. Orions would keep that rationale in good conscience, as they would otherwise fall subject to Federation retaliation, if they were to lose their neutrality. (TOS: "Journey to Babel"; TAS: "The Pirates of Orion")

Screenwriter Roberto Orci remarked that Gaila could have escaped the life of an Orion slave girl because "there's an underground railroad and some of the Orion slave girls got out and they were sold to freedom." [2] (The comics "Reunion, Part 1" and "Part 2" go into greater detail about this.)

On the other hand, the novelization of the film describes the attention she receives from Human males as "chemically unavoidable" but also mentions the danger of being around her too long, suggesting the "Bound" pheremones are emitted by her as well.

Despite the rich cultural history of Orion and outside of their "official" stance of neutrality, a dark side of the Orion culture exists in their active trafficking of forced labor through the Orion slave markets, especially their slave girls. Verex III and the Orion colony were well-known trade centers during the 22nd and 23rd centuries. (ENT: "Borderland"; TOS: "The Cage")

The primary entity operating within these confines was known as the Orion Syndicate, comprised of a conglomeration of traders, pirates and smugglers. These individuals were well-known for their many illegal operations outside of the slave trade, including extortion, theft, raids, kidnappings and assassinations. (DS9: "The Ascent", "Honor Among Thieves", "Prodigal Daughter") These activities were facilitated in the region of space which separated the Orion Syndicate from the Klingon Empire, known as the Borderland. During the 22nd century, this volatile region of space attracted the most dangerous elements from both sides. (ENT: "Borderland")

In 2154, the EarthstarshipEnterprise inadvertently made contact with Orion pirates when they encountered a number of Orion Interceptors, which kidnapped nine of Enterprise's crew. The crew was recovered from the Orion processing station on Verex III, where they had been taken. (ENT: "Borderland")

The first known Orion contact with Humans was made with Arik Soong during the 2130s. Soong established a relationship with the Orion Syndicate in order to acquire certain goods and equipment that he and his Augments needed to survive. (ENT: "Borderland")

By 2155, the Orions had established trade with the Coridan "for centuries." That year, during the formation of the Coalition of Planets, the Tellarites pushed for an embargo against the Orions, claiming that several of their freighters had been attacked by the Orions. Considering their long history of trade with the Orions, the Coridan stated that they would have known of these apparent attacks, refusing to believe what they considered to be "Tellarite slander", which they believed was simply a Tellarite attempt to deprive them of valuable commerce. (ENT: "Demons")

In 2268, the Orions circumvented their neutrality by attacking the USS Enterprise, which was responsible for transporting delegates to the Babel Conference.

Among the delegates was an Orion spy, Thelev, disguised as an Andorian, who in association with an attacking Orion scout ship made a futile attempt to prevent the conference by destroying the USS Enterprise. Had their attack on Starfleet succeeded, they would have instigated mutual suspicion and possibly interplanetary war. Had war broken out, they would have cleaned up supplying dilithium to both sides while continuing to raid Coridan. (TOS: "Journey to Babel")

Orion's neutrality remained in dispute ever since the Coridan planets affair and the Babel Conference of stardate 3850.3. This was again brought to light in 2270 when an Orion vessel attacked and raided the USS Huron of its cargo of dilithium and a shipment of strobolin intended for transfer to the USS Enterprise.

Following the discovery of the disabled Huron, the Enterprise tracked the Orion ship to an asteroid belt. Initially, the crew was attacked by, and was later accused of harassing, the Orions, who then threatened to file a formal protest with the Federation.

It was when the Enterprise detected the dilithium in the Orion vessel's hold that Captain James T. Kirk told the Orions that he would allow them to keep the dilithium if they would return the strobolin, and would make no mention of the encounter in his log. The Orions did not trust Kirk, and suggested a nearby asteroid to hand over the drug.

This suggestion was a ruse, however, as the Orions planned to destroy themselves and the Enterprise during the exchange to preserve the appearance of Orion neutrality. The plot failed and the Orion vessel and crew were captured, casting further doubt on the future of the Orions' claim to neutrality. (TAS: "The Pirates of Orion")

Star Trek's first depiction of an Orion was in a scene from the series' first pilot episode, "The Cage", in which an illusory Earth trader and a uniformed space officer try to talk Captain Christopher Pike into falling in love with Vina, who appears as an illusory Orion slave girl.

The final draft of the episode's script featured a different version of the scene from that used in the episode. In the scene as first conceived, the illusory Earth trader teased Pike by suggesting that, as former captain of the starship Enterprise, he used to send Earth "blistering reports," such as "'the Orion traders taking shocking advantage of the natives....'" Intentionally referring to Vina, the illusory space officer asked Pike, "Do any of you have a green one? They're dangerous, I hear." This version of the scene implies that writer and series creator Gene Roddenberry originally conceived the Orions to have more varied colors of skin than just green.

Green Orion make-up is screen-tested by Majel Barrett

The Orion make-up is applied to Susan Oliver by make-up artist Fred Phillips

Before being used in filming "The Cage", Vina's green make-up was tested on Majel Barrett and Susan Oliver. "Believe me, it was not easy to be green. There were many experiments with makeup. Fred Phillips, head of the makeup department, couldn't get the [...] [right] makeup. They couldn't find any green makeup that would stick to skin, so they tried many, many things on me until they finally sent for help from New York where they found what they wanted," recalled Oliver. (Starlog, issue 135, p. 78) When camera tests of the make-up were being done with Barrett, however, post-production editors were confused at seeing a green woman. They tried to compensate by chemically reconverting the green color tone to flesh color tones, and sent the film back to the production crew three times without the green skin being visible. Angered at this, Phillips had his make-up crew repeatedly paint Barrett with darker shades of paint, hoping it would become visible on screen. The production team eventually discovered that the film processing lab had been recolorizing her because they had been unaware her skin was meant to be green. Gene Roddenberry explained to them it was actually intended to be such.

Archive footage of Vina as the illusory Orion slave girl was later used in "The Menagerie, Part II". Later, "Journey to Babel" featured the first genuine Orion. However, he had been surgically altered to appear Andorian. It was not until their final appearance in The Original Series, "Whom Gods Destroy", that a genuine female Orion appeared on screen and, later, it was in the Orions' appearance on The Animated Series' "The Pirates of Orion" that a genuine male Orion first appeared.

The Orions appearing in The Animated Series depicted an Orion female, in "The Time Trap", and the Orion males in "The Pirates of Orion" as being light-skinned due to coloring difficulties (the same problem also occurred with the normally blue-skinned Andorians, which appeared gray). Although most other Star Trek episodes had pronounced Orion as "Oh-RYE-on", the word was pronounced "OR-ee-un" throughout "The Pirates of Orion". The mistake was due to the fact that the animated scripts did not include a pronunciation page, unlike scripts of later live-action Star Trek episodes. "The Pirates of Orion" also featured the second appearance of an Orion craft, this time using a far more detailed animation than that used in "Journey to Babel". The episode was the first to reference the Orion species in its title and remains the only episode to have done so.

Star Trek: Enterprise writer/producer Mike Sussman had hoped to show the origins of Orion privateers by making them the adversaries in the third season episode "Anomaly". However, during rewrites, the species was changed to a new race, the Osaarians. Had the Orions appeared, the episode would have established that they were originally known as peaceful merchants in the mid-22nd century – it was the hardships of life inside the Delphic Expanse that led some Orions to become more aggressive and predatory when dealing with other species.

The notion of bringing the Orions back to Star Trek extremely appealed to Manny Coto, who became show-runner of ENT Season 4. "I'd always wanted to do Orions," he explained. "I'd always been fascinated with Orions [...] and I wanted to explore the Orion culture, the males and what they look like and how they function." ("Before Her Time: Decommissioning Enterprise, Part Two: Memorable Voyages", ENT Season 4 Blu-ray special features)

After the last live-action appearance of an Orion, in 1969's "Whom Gods Destroy", the next such appearance of the species was finally realized thirty-five years later, in 2004's "Borderland", an installment of ENT's fourth season. In that episode, the Orions appeared en masse, with several actors portraying brutish male members of the species and model Bobbi Sue Luther starring as an Orion slave girl. The Orion males were so numerous in "Borderland" that the episode's final draft script noted, "Unless specified, all Orions are males."

Regarding male Orions, the "Borderland" script stated, "Orions are hulking, muscular figures... like walking mountains. Elaborate tattooing and metal piercings cover their olive skin." Although The Animated Series' coloring difficulties had caused the Orions' appearances to remain true to Gene Roddenberry's original vision of the species as rarely having a green complexion, "Borderland" indeed continued the ultimate Original Series depiction of the Orions as usually green-skinned. The look of the Orion males in the episode was extrapolated from the Orion females in The Original Series episodes.

Star Trek: Enterprise continued to depict the Orions as a green-skinned species in their following two appearances, the first of which, "Bound", showed, for the first time in a live-action series, the interior of an Orion spacecraft. One set, reminiscent of an Arabian sheik's luxurious abode, was built as an elaborate room where guests could be entertained while another set, which only appeared on a viewscreen, was a one-wall representation of the Orion bridge. The episode also featured three Orion slave girls, as well as the prominent role of Harrad-Sar. In the episode's script, Harrad-Sar was described as "powerful, imposing and fiercely intelligent". Sixty-three year-old William Lucking was cast as the Orion male and was made to look bigger than in reality by wearing platform shoes and a bulky leather-padded costume. Each of the actors who played Orions in the episode, including two extras who appeared as male Orion guards, were spray-painted with green body make-up in special booths for approximately four hours.

Two episodes later, "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II" featured a minor appearance of the first Orion crew member seen serving aboard a Starfleet vessel, although the entire episode took place in the mirror universe. The next Orion in Starfleet was in the alternate reality of the filmStar Trek. To date, no Orion Starfleet officers have been seen in the main universe.

The make-up for the Orions of the alternate reality depicted in the film Star Trek was designed by Barney Burman, who designed and created the other aliens in that film too. "I was involved in early designs on our Orions and came up with the initial design, the technique and the kinds of paint that we would use on [them]," explained Burman. "Very shortly after that, I was overwhelmed with prosthetic aliens and had to give the Orions over to the straight makeup department. They just did a bang-up job." Burman was also responsible for deciding to make the Starfleet Orion crew member in the film (namely, Gaila) have red hair. (Star Trek Magazine issue 155, p. 57)